The Union Home Ministry has filed a case with the Delhi Police in connection with the missing files relating to the Isharat Jahan encounter incident, The Hindu reported on Sunday. Officials say the First Information Report, registered against unknown persons under Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code (dealing with the criminal breach of trust by a public servant) will establish whether the relevant files were deliberately removed from the ministry.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh on March 10 told Parliament that certain pages from the files relating to the matter were missing, following which a one-man committee was set up to find the documents. In June, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram claimed that the report filed by the BK Prasad panel, which claimed Ishrat Jahan files went missing under the former Home Minister’s watch, was just a “fake controversy” created by the National Democratic Alliance government.

According to the Prasad’s report, the files missing in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case were “removed knowingly or unknowingly, or misplaced” when Chidambaram led the Home Ministry. The files went missing in transit from the home minister’s office to that of the joint secretary between September 18 and 28 in 2009, said Additional Secretary BK Prasad, who was tasked with the investigation.

Jahan’s death in an alleged fake encounter in June 2004 was brought to light once more in February, after Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Taiba member convicted of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, David Headley, testified to a Mumbai court that she was a member of the terror group.